The slim owner of Gaza City's Gallery cafe has sharp eyes and a sharp tongue. It's easy to imagine him conversing with artists and actors -- he is also a theater director -- far into the night. But he crossed a line. He allowed female patrons at his cafe to smoke hookah pipes and to talk with men. He ignored demands by plainclothes police to rein in "immoral" behavior. In early May, police interrogated and accused him of having extramarital affairs. To persuade him to confess, they beat him with a 2-inch-thick, leather-covered bamboo rod for 50 minutes, and later forced him to stand on one leg for two hours.
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In Gaza, prisoners twice over
Palestinians are being squeezed by the Israeli blockade and Hamas' 'Islamizing' actions.
The blockade of the Gaza Strip -- brought into focus by Israel's deadly interception of blockade-busting ships May 31 -- is not the only problem faced by that territory's besieged and impoverished population. As we at Human Rights Watch documented during a trip to Gaza in May, severe violations of personal freedom, and repression of civil society groups that defend that freedom, appear to be sharply on the rise. The Hamas government, trying to shore up its image as an Islamic reform movement in the face of challenges from more radical Islamist groups, is consolidating its social control by upping its efforts to "Islamize" Gaza.
A notorious example is the expanded role of Gaza's "morality police." Last summer, these black-uniformed police began to patrol the beaches to ensure that men and women are dressed "appropriately" -- there is no written rule, but a woman was punished for swimming in a T-shirt and jeans -- and that unrelated men and women are not mingling. They make sure clothing stores display only modestly dressed female mannequins in their windows. They have enforced bans on women riding motorcycles and on male hairdressers working in women's hair salons. Couples walking down the street are routinely stopped, separated and questioned by plainclothes officers asking whether they're married. "You basically have to carry a copy of your marriage license on you at all times, or risk being humiliated," one young couple told us. And parents say their daughters are under pressure to dress more conservatively for school.
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